Why we recommend the Rustic Wilderness Tapestry: The stand-out feature of this little lav mic is that it’s not wireless–it’s the recorder itself!
So you put the box in your pocket and press record, run the wire under your shirt to clip the mic on your collar, and you’re ready to go! One additional killer feature is that it records two tracks simultaneously at two different gain settings, so if you yell or laugh loudly, you never have audio peaking issues. It’s really innovative. Ricky and Jim use these little recorders in nearly every Youtube video they make. Hear a sample of the audio in this video, for example.
What they could do to improve: The audio signature is a little “tin-cannish”. It doesn’t sound as full as some mics, but it’s not the worst. Overall it sounds very professional, but if you have a golden ear, you’ll notice it.
Compared to the competition: We’ve tried wireless lav mics which have the benefit of inserting the audio straight into the video so it doesn’t have to be synced later, but we just found the connection issues to be a pain. If we don’t use these lav mics, we use the Rode VideoMic Pro+ which is awesome but gathers too much room echo for use in our home offices.